7 Ways to Generate Creative Ideas
19/12/08 Filed in: 7 Ideas Coach | 7IC Meetings
Meetings That Work ~ session #5
7 Ideas Coach is an ongoing series of coaching sessions,
7 nuggets of insight in 7 minutes for busy leaders
Your team sits around a conference table. You need some creative thinking, ideas that are original, fresh, engaging.
You say, “Give me your best thinking on…” or “What is your most creative solution to…”
What are the changes you’ll get back pretty conventional stuff? ...or blank stares?
The request for “best” and “most creative” ideas pre-supposes that any idea suggested must at least be good. Therefore, ideas that do not meet a conventional and quick analysis of ‘good’ are mentally screened out, both consciously and unconsciously.
A better method is to set up a scenario for generating LOTS of ideas, creative ideas – without screening for them to be ‘good’ ideas. Judgment, screening, and analysis are appropriate (and necessary) later, when it’s time to sort, choose, and apply ideas.
Use the techniques below during brainstorming to generate off the wall ideas that on later analysis may trigger useful insights.
__________________
7 Ideas Coach is an ongoing series of coaching sessions,
7 nuggets of insight in 7 minutes for busy leaders
Your team sits around a conference table. You need some creative thinking, ideas that are original, fresh, engaging.
You say, “Give me your best thinking on…” or “What is your most creative solution to…”
What are the changes you’ll get back pretty conventional stuff? ...or blank stares?
The request for “best” and “most creative” ideas pre-supposes that any idea suggested must at least be good. Therefore, ideas that do not meet a conventional and quick analysis of ‘good’ are mentally screened out, both consciously and unconsciously.
A better method is to set up a scenario for generating LOTS of ideas, creative ideas – without screening for them to be ‘good’ ideas. Judgment, screening, and analysis are appropriate (and necessary) later, when it’s time to sort, choose, and apply ideas.
Use the techniques below during brainstorming to generate off the wall ideas that on later analysis may trigger useful insights.
- Ask the stupid question. Pose questions about how to achieve the opposite of your aims, for example, what’s the most stupid thing we could do? What would be a really impressive mistake? What would make this business crash and burn?What creates failure often illuminates unobserved factors of success.
- How would another business go about this? Ask how would someone else look at an issue from the perspective of another business or industry? How would a auto garage handle this problem? A bank? An airline? A funeral home? An art gallery? A charity?
- Wisdom from Famous People. What would Ben Franklin do? Oprah? Gandhi? Captain Kirk? Mark Twain? Eleanor Roosevelt? Look up quotes and consider how they might apply to your situation. (our quote page is a great resource)
- “It’s like...” explore analogies and metaphors. Landscape, sailing, gardening metaphors are rich and easy to build upon. Avoid sports, war, and racing metaphors – these are overused and more likely to lead to just more conventional thinking.
- Forced associations. Select a random a word from a book, newspaper, or magazine, and brainstorm how your issue relates to that word. A variation is to use an object in the room, or one of several items on a table.
- Look at Smaller Pieces. Break up issue into smaller components and explore the issue at that level. If, for example, you are brainstorming ways to improve eyeglasses, consider how to improve the frame, the lens, the bridge, nose pads, hinges, the little screws that hold everything together.
- Reverse Assumptions. List assumptions, then consider possibilities if those assumptions were reversed. For example, assumptions about airplanes would be they have wings, have pilots, need airports. What about an airplane with no wings, or no pilot, or not needing an airport?
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